The copyright symbol ".COPYRGT." followed by a name and date, represents one of the most well known legal protections in the world. The common-sense idea that the creator of a work has the right to control the sale and distribution of that work is fundamental to the copyright law, recognizing that society will be the loser without such a law, since its most creative forces will be robbed of their ability to earn a living.
The preferred embodiment of the present invention deals with the clash between new, very high quality photographic copying technology, the copyright laws, and ultimate compensation for photographers. Technology is now available permitting consumers to rather easily make amateur-or even professional-grade copies of photographs. For wedding and portrait photographers in particular, the business of making duplications is fundamental to their livelihoods. The threat of such copying is felt strongly.
The preferred embodiment of the invention employs a relatively low cost way to disable a machine's ability to copy a copyrighted photograph, or to require a royalty payment be made at the time of copying. This arrangement facilitates the consumer's compliance with the copyright law, serves the photographer who owns the copyright, and aids the copy service and supply vendor (who can potentially sell more products and services by lowering barriers to their consumption).
These functions can be achieved by pre-applying, or pre-exposing, very low level visible digital information (essentially imperceptible) directly into photographic products such as negative film, paper, transparencies, and so forth. A photographic duplication kiosk can then be constructed in a way so that this embedded information can be read and, if so instructed by the embedded information, disable the copying function of the kiosk.
Many different physical embedding possibilities exist which can implement the invention, where pre-exposure of film is presented in detail as a particularly economic approach. Likewise, the exact design of the embedded information can take many different forms. An exemplary embodiment employs spatial domain representations, and includes rotationally symmetric one-or two-dimensional patterns. Numerous other embodiments are similarly practical. The choices are as wide as communications technology allow. The modulation mechanism (i.e. the physical basis for carrying the embedded signal) is as wide as physical sensing technology allows. As detailed below, specific systems will dictate specific economic choices among these possibilities.
While the foregoing summary particularly addressed image data and photo-duplication equipment, the same principles are equally applicable to other types of steganographically-encoded data and other contexts.
The foregoing and additional features and advantages of the present invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.